Speaker Series in 2010/11

Professor John Whalley, University of Western Ontario and CAGE, University of Warwick - 'The Post Kyoto (2012) Global Climate Policy Regime'

Monday February 21st 6pm venue Ramphal R0.21

John Whalley is a economist specialising in globalization, the WTO and the global trading system; global environmental issues; global warming and carbon taxes. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a researcher in the Warwick Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE), and a Distinguished Fellow of the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

Monday February 7th 6pm venue LIB2

The privatisation of the railways has been the most controversial and, arguably, the least successful of the various state sell-offs of the Thatcher and Major years. Christian Wolmar, who has documented the story of rail privatisation in several books, assesses the record and suggests a few lessons to be drawn from the story.

Christian Wolmar is one of the UK's leading commentators on transport matters. A journalist and author, he has written widely on the history and economics of railways, he was the transport correspondent for the Independent and is a trenchant critic of rail privatisation and broadcasts frequently on radio and TV. His books include Blood, Iron and Gold (2009), Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain (2007), On The Wrong Line: How Ideology and Incompetence Wrecked Britain's Railways (2005), Subterranean Railway: A Social History of the Tube (2004), Broken Rails: How Privatisation Wrecked Britain's Railways (2001). His latest book is Engines of War (2010): How wars were won and lost on the railways. His website, with an archive of his articles in newspapers and magazines, is http://www.christianwolmar.co.uk.

Professor Jonathan Wolff, University College London University, 'Philosophy and Public Policy', organised by the PPE Society

Monday November 1st 5pm LIB2

Jonathan Wolff is a political philosopher. He has specialized in disadvantage and equality in relation to public policy making. He has written about Marx and Marxism, and Nozick. He co-edited Political Thought, an introductionary reader on political philosophy. In 2009 he presented a 4 part series about the UK's National Health Service for the BBC's Radio 3. Entitled Doctoring Philosophy, it marked the 60th anniversary of the NHS and commenced by studying the philosophical background which led to the foundation of the service and the changing definitions of sickness and health. It went on to explore entitlement, issues of equality of service, and issues of priorities in a world of universal access. He has a monthly column in the Guardian.